Book description
Cool Runnings meets Joseph O'Neill's Netherland in an
inspiring and feel-good story of bravery and sporting success from a
country so widely known for war and extremism. This is the true story
of the Afghanistan cricket team and their extraordinary attempt to
join the world's elite cricketing nations. That this devastated nation
should be able to field a cricket team at all, let alone one as
successful as this, is an unbelievable achievement. Seven years ago,
in a country which does not have a real cricket pitch even today,
there was no national team. But a group of young Afghan men, exiled by
war, learnt to play in the smashed concrete of refugee camps, and have
risen from obscurity to the groomed grass pitches of international cricket.
With unlimited access, Tim Albone travelled alongside the team for
the two years, charting the players' progress from refugees in
Pakistan to the brink of international sporting stardom. Far from
being bogged down in cricket jargon, this tale of a gang of dedicated,
charismatic, occasionally exasperating young men seeking triumph out
of disaster is one that will move and inspire everyone.
Foreword by Mike Atherton.
Tim Albone is the former
Times
and
Sunday Times
correspondent in Afghanistan. In 2008 he was shortlisted for the
Bayeux-Calvados War Correspondent Award. He is currently making a
documentary about the Afghan cricket team and for the last fifteen
months has had unlimited access to the squad during their remarkable
effort to reach the World Cup.
